category: ethnicity and national identity

We seek submissions for an edited collection on techno-Orientalism, dubbed by David Morley and Kevin Robins and refined by Greta Niu as the practice of ascribing, erasing, and/or disavowing relationships between technology and Asian subjects. From Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu in the early twentieth-century to William Gibson’s late twentieth-century cyber adventures, figurations of Asian people and landscapes have been uncannily linked to societal desires and fears in speculative discourses of science and technology. Fu Manchu, for instance, embody the onset of American techno-Orientalist anxieties through his occult-like ability to co-opt Western knowledge, while Gibson’s Asian landscapes and ninja bodyguards play upon late-capitalist fears of faceless, mechanical, de-individuated Japanese sarariman (Salarymen) who threaten American economic dominance. This volume aims to establish techno-Orientalism as a crucial and compelling cross-genre critical field, and to provide critical insight into the problematically persistent trope of the technologized Asian in science fiction literature, film, and new media.